Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Complaint launched against Arjun Lal

Deryk is finally outing himself fully as a regular reader and supporter of my blog, and as a Canadian who has sent a complaint about KillYourStutter.com website to CASLPO. I wonder whether Deryk's newly found courage comes from his being awarded a PhD recently. Congratulations on your well-deserved PhD, Dr. Deryk S. Beal! :-)

Dear Brian and Colleagues,

I am writing you today to bring your attention to a possibly fraudulent stuttering program operating in Ontario. Dr. Tom Weidig is a person who stutters and the author of "The Stuttering Brain" http://thestutteringbrain.blogspot.com stuttering news source. Today, Dr. Weidig reported to his readers evidence that a possibly fraudulent stuttering program
is operating out of Unionville Ontario. As a ourtesy, and in recognitionof his initial involvement in identifying the website in question, I have carbon copied Dr. Weidig on this email.

The address of the website in question is www.killyourstutter.com. ;The website uses testimonials and makes unfounded claims about the program's ability to cure stuttering. In my opinion it is a scam and a danger to the stuttering community not only in Ontario but internationally. A search of publicly available information on domain names (www.godaddy.com) reveals that the registrant of the domain name is:

Registrant:
Arjun Lal
31 Country Estates Drive
Unionville, Ontario L6C1A4
Canada

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: KILLYOURSTUTTER.COM
Created on: 03-Jul-09
Expires on: 03-Jul-12
Last Updated on: 04-Jul-10


As you may know, the ethics of advertising stuttering services has received widespread attention in the United States as recently as June 13, 2010 [please see: (http://stuttertalk.com/2010/06/13/petition-asha-stuttering.aspx) and (http://stuttertalk.com/2010/01/24/stuttering.aspx)]. I look forward to learning the College's response to this obvious attempt to take advantage of a vulnerable population of individuals who stutter and their families.

Deryk S. Beal, Ph.D., S-LP(C), Reg. CASLPO
Speech-Language Pathologist
C.I.H.R. Post Doctoral Research Fellow
Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems Speech Laboratory
Boston University, 677 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02215

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great site Tom. Is it me or do I just know more about stuttering than 99% of the SLP's that I have come into contact with. What do they teach at schools regarding stuttering? ASHA needs some serious changes. What's your take?
Stutter on peps!

Satyendra said...

I think, we need to Kill "Kill your stutter" FIRST and then, get down to reforming Traditional speech therapy.. It is their failure, which hhas caused the rise of such "entrepreneurs".. and somewhere, we must build the capacity of PWS to help her/him self...

Anonymous said...

I am not going to defend clueless clinicians any more than I will defend ANYONE who knowingly defrauds people, and I work very hard to educate SLPs who did not get benefit of adequate training in their programs due to what I agree basically inexcusable changes in ASHA training policies over the years.
The Lals' postings, which have been engineered to show up in unbroken PAGES of Google searches for stuttering treatment (and now, today, REVIEWS of the KYS program, seemingly to steer web users even as we discuss this problem) seem to be fairly clear evidence of a DELIBERATE ATTEMPT TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF PWS, TAKE THEIR MONEY AND RUN, having done them no service at all.
I think that we need to work to STOP this, and to warn PWS and their families, particularly in places where there are NO SLPs (did you know there are NO programs in mainland China, for example???) who turn to these deceptive and very deliberately abusive sales postings for help they will never get.
Nan Ratner

Anonymous said...

Maybe you should partner up with Stuttertalk to have a petition against ASHA and stuttering issues in the profession.